Saint from the slums: Pope Francis has died

Pope Francis, the first pontiff from the Western Hemisphere, has died. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Argentina. There he spent the main years of his ministry — as a parish priest, and then as a bishop, whom the flock adored for his justice and closeness to ordinary people. Already as a bishop, he traveled through criminal Buenos Aires exclusively by metro and buses. "My flock are poor people, and I am one of them," he said. Izvestia recalls the life of Pope Francis.

Chemist

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires on December 17, 1936, into a family of Italian immigrants. His parents fled Europe in the late 1920s, fleeing the fascist regime of Mussolini. The father of the future pontiff, Mario Jose Bergoglio, worked as an accountant in the Argentine railway department, and his mother, Regina Maria Sivori, was busy running a troubled household: the Bergoglio family had five children. Jorge Mario was the eldest, so since childhood he had to help his parents by doing housework and earning a living. In high school, he had worked as a bouncer in a bar and a janitor, but at the same time he had the strength to study well. Fortunately, studying was easy for him. "He was very smart, he knew a lot, but he wasn't a nerd—he was just very good at thinking and grasping everything quickly," one of his classmates later recalled.

After completing his secondary education, he entered the technical school named after Hipolito Yrigoyen, where he received a diploma in chemical engineering. He worked in a food laboratory for several years. At that time, he was indulging in the joys of life common to a young man. After work, Jorge met with friends, and they went somewhere to have fun - they had gatherings at the bar, played soccer or went to dance milonga at the dance hall in the Chacarita area. The future pontiff even chose a bride for himself — a neighbor girl, Amalia Damonte, with whom they had a warm mutual sympathy.

Catholic upbringing, however, did not allow young people to have too free a relationship, and the most daring courtship for Jorge was a child's drawing of a brick house with the signature given to Amalia.: "When we get married, we'll have a house like this." The girl's parents, however, did not appreciate the offer: after seeing the note with the drawing, they categorically forbade the girl to meet with a too bold neighbor.

However, thoughts about marriage soon lost their relevance. Jorge enrolled in the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Buenos Aires. This did not come as a surprise to anyone: since childhood, he was distinguished by piety, regularly attended Mass and more than once told his friends about his desire to become a Jesuit missionary in order to bring the Good News to people. However, youthful emotions sometimes prevailed: for example, he later admitted that, while already studying at the seminary, he met a girl at his uncle's wedding who stole his peace for a long time. "I couldn't pray for a week, and I was seriously considering whether I should leave the seminary," Bergoglio recalled. "But after serious thought, I chose the path of serving the church."

The Jesuit

On March 11, 1958, Jorge Mario Bergoglio joined the Jesuit Order and was sent to study in Chile. He studied humanities, sociology, philosophy, and theology, and later earned a master's degree in philosophy from San Miguel College in the Argentine capital. For several years he was engaged in teaching literature and psychology at Catholic colleges in Buenos Aires.

On December 3, 1969, he was ordained a priest by Bishop Ramon Jose Castellano and reached the highest, fourth degree of ordination in the Jesuit order. Impressed by his organizational and leadership abilities, the leadership of the order in Argentina constantly promoted the young priest. In 1973, at the age of 37, a well-known theologian and preacher took over the post of provincial of Argentina. He marked his new appointment with a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which turned out to be overly hectic due to the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War.,

He had enough energy to combine preaching and science. Since 1980, Jorge Bergoglio has been the rector of the Buenos Aires Seminary, which he himself once graduated from. Six years later, he went to St. George's Catholic College in Frankfurt, where he defended his doctoral thesis in theology and returned to his homeland with the rank of spiritual director of the Archdiocese of Cordoba. An educated priest is considered promising in the episcopate, and at the same time he is adored by ordinary people for his personal modesty and calm commitment to the ideals of social justice, not in words, but in deeds. In 1992, Bergoglio was consecrated bishop, and soon he was appointed coadjutor (deputy with the right to inherit the diocese) of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires. On February 28, 1998, after the death of Cardinal Quarrasino, who held this position, the future Pope assumed the post of Archbishop of the Argentine capital.

High office did not force him to abandon his habitually modest lifestyle. He abandoned the luxury apartments occupied by his predecessor, still lived in a small apartment in a not-so-posh area of the city — the suburb of Olivos — and cooked his own meals. He also did not use a chauffeured limousine, preferring to travel around the city by public transport — by metro and buses. It is not surprising that ordinary Argentines considered Archbishop Bergoglio almost a saint.

The Bishop of Rome

On February 21, 2001, Bishop Bergoglio was elevated to the rank of cardinal by Pope John Paul II. Before the ceremony, the future Pope, along with his sister Maria Elena, visited the village where his father was born for the first time. However, after becoming a cardinal, Bergoglio no longer left his parents' homeland: he immediately took up five administrative posts in the Roman Curia. He worked in several congregations, and later became acting secretary-referent in the Synod of Bishops. In Rome, as in Buenos Aires, he quickly gained a reputation as an intelligent, active and friendly man, and even the press spoke of him with sympathy, especially noting his "openness to communication and dialogue."

When John Paul II died in April 2005, Cardinal Bergoglio became the chief funeral director for the pontiff from the College of Cardinals and served as regent until the new Pope ascended the throne. As a rule, these responsibilities are assigned to the most likely successor. Bergoglio was indeed considered the main candidate for the papal throne, but during the vote of the cardinals he lost the election to Joseph Ratzinger, who took the name Benedict XVI. In the deciding vote, he won 26 votes — less than was required to win, but significantly more than any priest of Latin American origin had managed before. According to experts, it was this that prevented Bergoglio from taking the throne for the first time.

The next vote took place 8 years later. In 2013, Benedict XVI abdicated due to ill health, and this time the Argentine Jorge Maria Bergoglio was elected to the highest post of the Catholic world. He accepted the papacy under the name Francis, taking it in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan mendicant order, a famous preacher of non-covetousness and love of neighbor.

After becoming a Pope, Bergoglio still did not give up his usual modesty in everyday life. He refused to wear a gold ring, the symbol of papal authority, replaced the papal throne with a modest armchair, significantly reduced the number of rooms in the papal residence and drove only modest cars.

Pope Francis has never hidden his human weaknesses, which, according to ordinary Catholics, only made him more human. Since his youth, the Pope has retained his love for Latin American dancing, and in 2014, on his 78th birthday, the congregation gave the Pope a gift by staging a massive flash mob with a performance of his favorite milonga in St. Peter's Square. Also, Dad has never hidden his love for the Buenos Aires football club San Lorenzo, which he supported as a child with his father. When the club won the Copa Libertadores in 2014, the main club football award in South America, the San Lorenzo team was awarded an audience with the pontiff in Rome, during which Pope Francis was solemnly presented with a personalized club T—shirt. However, the Pope himself sadly told reporters that since 1990 he had been deprived of the opportunity to watch the matches of his favorite club on TV, because he had vowed to the Virgin Mary to give up television programs. As the Pontiff himself admitted, the Vatican guards told him about the results of the matches. But for many years, the head of the Catholic Church maintained his own page on the social network X (former. Twitter) and even launched a special prayer website "Click and Pray" with a corresponding mobile application.

The Pope first spoke about his ill health in July 2022, after a visit to Canada, complaining that such trips were becoming difficult for him. At the same time, the Vatican for the first time started talking about the possible abdication of Francis for health reasons. However, he remained at his post.
Pope Francis died on April 21.